Noise Ninja

sineadw

I've been wilfing all night and just found this little doozer of a plug-in. Seems to be working great with the high iso stuff I took at the weekend. Maybe you all know it already?

before:


after:


Although not sure if i'm sacrificing sharpness?

Just thought I'd throw it out there anyway..

Fenster

You are sacrificing sharpness. It's noise reduction function blurs the photo slightly to remove sensor noise - Photoshop and The Gimp (selective gaussian blur) both have this feature.

sineadw

Ah right - I thought so but wasn't sure. Still no CRT and I can't see a thing on this laptop. Any way to fiddle with it or is noise just one of those things you can do nothing with?

Edit - oops - just realised this should be in digital darkroom..

Zillah

I've heard that Noise Ninja is brilliant, but I'm fairly sure they want money for it.

Fenster: Obviously you have to lose some sharpness for reducing noise, thats a given. I think the idea is that Noise Ninja is one of the ones that get maximum noise reduction for minimum sharpness loss.

DaireQuinlan

Look at Neatimage instead. Its free for arbitrarily sized 8 bit JPGs , you have to buy it to enable the 16bit input/output. I found it to do a fantastic job. Seperates the image into that odd YCB(?) color space and then does noise reduction selectively on each of the channels. It was considerably better than just doing a blur. Of course as always too much results in those wierd looking plasticky images , but a good compromise can be found in almost all situations. I used it for grainy film, but I'd say it'd be better still for digital noise.

http://www.neatimage.com/

melekalikimaka

i use both...kinda likin noise now tho.tis a fine line between it working and blurring alright

Borderfox

I use noise ninja a lot and find it excellent but no substitute for good technique.

Valentia

Borderfox wrote:

I use noise ninja a lot and find it excellent but no substitute for good technique.

Keith, no technique is going to get rid of noise at high ISOs?

Borderfox

Good positioning at an event and forward planning is what I mean. eg. if you are doing a gig then go along beforehand and check the lighting and see if you can position yourself to take advantage of a better viewpoint. If I go to do a horse show I will get there early and have a look around the place, I will tell them to turn on the lights (difference between ISO 400 and 800) I will cehck where the horse come in and leave as shots around here can be shot at ISO 100 if you are careful. Thats what I mean by technique.

Fionn

ha haa
i thought you meant by good technique was being sober instead of being ratfaced!!

ho hum!!

Roen

Noise lives in the shadows.....nailing the exposure bang on will give you the best chance against noise.
Unfortunately because I shoot almost exclusively outdoors exposing for shadows usually means making an arse of the highlight details

Fionn

if my photographs suffer from noise - like a session i did recently at 1600 ISO (god damn it)
neat image rescued a lot of them without plastic too, it's good

Borderfox

I had a go of it, looks pretty good. Thanks